This year’s ALBERTINA fundraising dinner took place around the new exhibition on Robert Longo: Over 400 guests from business, art and media accepted the invitation for the last time from General Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder, who has guided the fortunes of ALBERTINA for the past 25 years turned it into a world-class museum.
One of the highlights of the evening was the presentation of a cake decorated with ALBERTINA’s heraldic animal, the Dürer hare. The sweet work of art from the Sacher pastry shop was presented by Andreas Brandstetter, President of the Friends of ALBERTINA:
“Klaus Albrecht Schröder brought ALBERTINA out of its comfort zone with enormous personal commitment, a high level of resilience, his great and noticeable joy in design and the willingness to take on personal responsibility and thus take risks, which is now rare, and consistently made it a house of global relevance and appeal. As a small symbolic thank you, we are presenting him with the Dürer bunny in chocolate on behalf of all the friends of ALBERTINA!” says Brandstetter.
Monumental drawings by Robert Longo
As part of the celebration, the guests had the opportunity to visit the new exhibition by Robert Longo, with whom the ALBERTINA has a special relationship: “It has been around 20 years since we opened the ALBERTINA 2003 with Robert Longo’s exhibition ‘The Freud Drawings’ were able to reopen. Instead of continuing to collect only small-format drawings, since this Longo exhibition in 2003, we have made the monumental, drawn ‘image’ the guideline of a contemporary collection and museum commission: Monet, Picasso, Anselm Kiefer and many others who until then were known for their large-format works the ALBERTINA were ignored, defined our new self-image from this point on and made the ALBERTINA a new museum. I am happy and grateful to be able to say that I have been able to implement all of my projects over the last 25 years,” said Klaus Albrecht Schröder.
A final waltz by Tschabalala Self
The proceeds from this year’s fundraising dinner were used to build the work Waltz from the American artist Tschabalala Self.
In her work, Tschabalala Self (*1990) deals with body politics, particularly the iconography of the black female body in contemporary art. Tschabalala Self’s art fits seamlessly into the ALBERTINA collection and exemplifies the diversification and expansion of the canon to include critical positions.
New Museum, end of an era: years with superlatives
In the last quarter of a century, a new museum was literally created in the ALBERTINA under the general direction of Klaus Albrecht Schröder: After renovation work, the extensive renovation of the palace and its expansion and modernization, the ALBERTINA was reopened in 2003 and landed with its first major exhibitions on Edvard Munch in the spring and Albrecht Dürer set a visitor record of over 800,000 visitors in autumn.
While the number of visitors in previous decades did not exceed 15,000, since Schröder took office the house has enjoyed over 800,000 to 1.1 million visitors every year. The exhibition area was increased from 200 m2 to over 11,000 m2, the total area grew from 2,500 m2 to over 30,000 m2 at three locations.
“Next year I will be handing over to my successor a well-ordered house with a comfortable financial cushion and 360 employees who are the best and most committed that one could only wish for as the head of such a great museum. From 2025, I’m looking forward to finally being able to look at this new ALBERTINA through the eyes of the audience,” said Schröder.
Schröder’s last invitation, given for the first time by head of fundraising Mara Grünberg, was followed by over 400 guests: in addition to Robert Longo and Erwin Wurm, who can be seen in a large retrospective on his 70th birthday at the ALBERTINA MODERN from September 13th, including Xenia Hausner, Andreas Gursky, Eva Beresin, Jakob Gasteiger, Andrea Eckert, Ralph Gleis, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, Andreas Brandstetter (UNIQA), Christian Konrad, Helga Rabl-Stadler, Christiane Wenkheim, Alexandra Winkler, Hans Peter Haselsteiner, Eva and Christoph Dichand.